my wife is quite mad she pecks chickens

ok its not quite as bad as it sounds but she has developed this method of stopping fighting and pecking at feeding time if a chicken pecks another chicken or stops 1 from eating she pecks the offender of the head with her finger nail they make a surprised look and run away  lol it does not hurt them but sure they don't expect this!!! it seems to work everyone's playing nicely lol

Your wife's not mad at all!  I've done this to my chickens - the latest time was just yesterday.   

One of my chickens (a Light Sussex named Sylvia) has always been very bold, but never liked being handled by me.  I can stroke most of the other pullets, but not her.  She just side-steps my hand.  She is the top of the pecking order in the flock, apart from me.  I'm definitely her boss! 

Yesterday Sylvia started crouching for the first time (hooray!  She will be laying soon!) so I took the opportunity to stroke her back.  She didn't try to run away.  But later I reached out to pat her again and instead of side-stepping my hand she pecked me - very deliberately and very hard! 

Well I'm definitely the Chief Chook and Sylvia needs to remember that.  So I pecked her back!  I don't have long nails, but I just used my fingertip to bop her on the forehead.  She didn't back down, just squared up to me.  So I squared up to her, kept my finger pointing at her right between the eyes, and drew myself up taller (I had been crouched down).  She shook her head, turned away and went back to foraging.

Excellent result!  I won that round of the challenge.  Sylvia had better not mess with the Chief Chook!

I'm all in favour of studying chicken body-language so you know what's going on.  From careful observation I know that the first chicken to shake or dip her head and look away is the loser in the game.  Hopefully Sylvia will think twice before pecking me again.

Well......you live and learn!!

...Got down on all fours and hissed at her...

  I was worried about my neighbours seeing me "pecking" a chicken but that scene would have been priceless!

Tried this yesterday, poppy was being mean to anastacia.
Did not go quite as well as I hoped, she was well up for a fight.....

In the end I just picked her up